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It's my own fault I suppose. Because my teenage years fell squarely within the eighties, I grew up with a version of Michael Jackson that's become definitive. Not for me the precocious early seventies child star of the Jackson 5 - no, my Michael Jackson was the single gloved, red leather jacketed face of the pneumatic pop sheen of 'Billie Jean' and its ilk. Golden years. Unfortunately, it also means that the music produced by the latter day Jackson wasn't really for me either, and if I looked sideways at 'You Are Not Alone' then along comes 'Earth Song' to knock me into a complete loop.
A curious entry into the Jackson canon, the only thing comparable is his 'We Are The World' co-write from 1985, though that was written to an order dictated by the mood of the times and the need for the US to be seen to be 'doing something' for famine relief comparable to the UK's Band Aid project. 'Earth Song' has no such pre-set agenda to follow save Jackson's own, but whereas the former song promised a "brighter day", the latter has a less rosy outlook to offer.
Apparently styled as an open letter to God ("What about all the peace, that you pledge your only son"), over its six minutes playing time Jackson bemoans what mankind has done to the world in a hideous mash up of ever increasing histrionics, clumsy imagery and bad metaphor of "bleeding earth", "weeping shores", blood, water, fire and brimstone that crank up the intensity in cycles leaving Jackson howling into the Armageddon until he squeaks "What about elephants!!!" And what indeed? But what about a little restraint Michael? A little subtlety or a little heart? 'Earth Song' has none of these things.
In fact, the cumulative effect is like being repeatedly slapped in the face by cold, dead fish that increases in size as the song progresses from a small mackerel that perished in an oil spill at the opening to a full head and body bludgeon from one of the "crying whales" freshly overculled by a Japanese commercial fleet at the bombastic boom of the ending. Subtle it is not; 'Earth Song' reminds me of the over earnest end product of a secondary school environmental project performed at an end of term concert while Miss Davies of the IT department projects stock images of pollution and famine on the wall behind them. I don't doubt Jackson's sincerity, but 'Earth Song' is a folly crude in its obviousness, clumsy in its execution and with no charm at all in its awkward naivety.
Another outing for the singing soldiers (surnames only this time) with another reliable workhorse of a song on day release from the retirement home. In terms of popularity, Frankie Laine's eighteen week at the top 1953 version has to be the benchmark, but Messer's Robson and Jerome abandon Laine's intensity for a lighter touch on their friendlier trinket of a version that's as faithful as it's predictable. With neither voice capable of raising any rafters, the music is left to shoulder the work of building to an end of the pier crescendo of massed choirs, kettle drums and tubular bells (well, it is Christmas) that's akin to drilling holes into a Ford Fiesta exhaust just to make it sound more powerful. Frankie didn't need any of that nonsense, but then again he had a vocal presence that could fill a room with no help whatsoever. Neither Robson nor Jerome, together or singularly, could say as much and this version is polite, harmless and totally unnecessary. Unless it has a subliminal backward 'Jointhearmyjointhearmyjointhearmy' message in there somewhere. Which I doubt. So 'totally unnecessary' it is then.
The title of Laurie Anderson's 1981 hit 'Oh Superman' was suffixed by the dedication 'for Massanet'; Anderson had based her song on "Ô Souverain" from Massanet's opera 'El Cid', an aria of surrender to superior forces beyond your control. It's themes are present, albeit updated, in Anderson's own observational monologue of a whole world collapsing in on itself as its core values fall away - "Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom". 'Gangsta's Paradise' isn't suffixed by 'for Wonder', but through being so closely based on Stevie Wonder's 1976 song 'Past Time Paradise', then it should have been, not least because Coolio twists the original into something else entirely in a manner that echo's Anderson's own approach.
Of course, sampling has been prevalent in rap and hip hop since Afrika Bambaataa was borrowing beats from Kraftwerk and the Yellow Magic Orchestra, yet while its undeniable that anybody with ears could tell that the whole main melody of 'Gangsta's Paradise' is lifted wholesale from Wonder's track, it's not in this case simply a matter of plagiarism by a lazy writer (its use has Wonder's blessing in any case). And that's because, despite the immediate similarities, Coolio's song updates or 'answers' Wonder's with a stance that's a reversed mirror image to the message of the source.
Both tracks have the plight of the black man in latter day America at their core, but while Wonder bemoans the inertia of a race ("They've been wasting most their lives, glorifying days long gone behind") waiting patiently to inherit the earth ("they keep telling of the day when the Saviour of love will come to stay"), Coolio's generation have left such blind acceptance behind and are all out to take it ("Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of, you better watch how ya talking and where ya walking, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk").
Rap is frequently castigated for glorifying and romanticising violence, but nobody in this 'paradise' is wearing anything so rose tinted - violence is a matter of fact of every day life ("death ain't nothing but a heart beat away") governed by its own in-built code of the street ("But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it") and presented as a shot of realism that neither glorifies nor condemns. And then in terms of music, 'Past Time Paradise's lyric of good times gone was replicated in a baroquely yearning, almost chamber music arrangement that tipped it's hat at 'Eleanor Rigby'. There are strings in 'Gangsta' s Paradise' too, but their wounded animal cries drip with a Bernard Hermann paranoia, ably assisted by the heartbeat thump of a bass-driven march and ghostly choir on the chorus that amplifies the urban dread in a way not heard in these pages since 'Ghost Town'.
It's been a long time coming, but after a few false starts and splutters, 'Gangsta's Paradise' is the first genuine rap number one. True, there are going to be many who won't see that as any great leap forward, but whatever your politics regarding the genre, it's heartening to see the public embracing something with a genuine edge and menace in these horse latitudes of the mid nineties where blandness has become a virtue and the norm rather than the exception. Which isn't bad for a song from a hokey Michelle Pfeiffer film that few remember now.
Whilst Simply Red's slick and cosy, nouveau soul tends to draw a fairly clear love it/hate it line in the sand, 'Fairground' is a difficult song to get to grips with. Hucknall's reliable vocal and the warmth of the recurring "I love the thought of coming home to you" urge me to clasp it to my heart, but its setting is too jagged and prickly for that and it's one that serves to keep it at arm's length - 'Fairground' tips its hat to dance culture and serves up a more angular clatter in place of the usual bedrock of brass/string driven winebar soul. And yet for all the undercurrent of rough abrasion, there's a formlessness about 'Fairground' that's difficult to reason with and harder to enjoy; it's not a song I can lose myself in, but to listen with any intent reveals the smoke and mirrors that its sophisticated adult sheen is built on. 'Fairground' is a more fragment than a fully formed song, but it's given substance by studio trickery and overdubs in the way a factory farmer will stuff a cow with hormones and steroids to make it bigger than it would otherwise be. It might be their only number one, but 'Fairground' would not make the cut of any 'Best Of Simply Red' that I was asked to compile.
Following his revival of 'Oh Carolina', Shaggy's neo-dancehall output continued to blend the old and the new with'Boombastic's good humoured mix of reggae, ragga, rap and R&B (RRRR&B?) making for a groin level throb that's hard to resist. 'Boombastic' is self promotion on a grand yet tongue in cheek scale ("I'm a lyrical lover no take me for no filth, with my sexual physique Jah know me well built"), and though his patois again means I can't make out half of what he's saying, the cocksure testosterone that drips from the grooves doesn't suggest he's whinging about having no luck with the ladies. Perhaps the tongue in cheek humour leans slightly too far into Ali G territory (not that Shaggy would have been aware of this in 1995 of course, but it's there for modern ears), but it's relentless, stop start sensuality creates an inbuilt steam room that made for an unimprovable way to keep the summer of 1995 alive for a few weeks longer.
The early nineties were not a good time to be Michael Jackson. With child sex abuse allegations threatening to call a halt to both career and liberty, any and all of his previous eccentricities came home to roost to paint a picture of a troubled and disturbed individual far removed from the glossy king of pop that dominated the eighties. A marriage to Lisa Marie Presley the previous year and their joint semi-nude turns in the video for this didn't do much to defuse the 'Wacko' nickname either; frankly, the man was captain of a rocking boat that needed to be stabilised.
Though long since established as an accomplished songwriter, 'You Are Not Alone' was written by R Kelly, albeit especially with Jackson in mind. An R&B ballad of lost love and longing, my problem from the outset is that it sounds like an R Kelly song, and I don't listen to Michael Jackson to hear R Kelly. In truth too I've never found Jackson terribly convincing as a balladeer either. Not on love songs anyway; while it's true to say the voice had matured since the brittle 'One Day In Your Life', 'You Are Not Alone' still carries an edge of unwillingness to embrace the solo spotlight without his trademark yelps and whoops colouring outside the lines. That's not necessarily Jackson's fault - Kelly's dull ballad provides little room to manoeuvre and with a rigid structure to follow, Jackson is as awkwardly constrained as a teenage punk at a job interview in a new suit. Which is apt really as the interview here was with his public with the song an appeal for recognition that, after all the slings and arrows hurled in his direction, he bleeds like the rest of us.
Ironically, it's exactly this vulnerability that gives 'You Are Not Alone' the edge that lifts it higher than the song's inherent worth. Contemporary events had conspired to give what would ordinarily be workaday R&B fodder resonance outside of simply being the latest Michael Jackson single. And it's that resonance that's going to colour your reaction to this; if you're part of 'Team Jackson' then the "Another day has gone, I'm still all alone" gives you all the excuse you need to want to give him a hug. If you're not, then this is just drippy, a rather cynical tug on the heartstrings from a man sounding like a small boy lost in the mall trying to explain to a security guard where he last saw his mother. I'll plump for the latter.
Oasis may have beaten them to the laurels of the first Brtitpop number one, but the battle fought and the ultimate victory for Blur with this song was enough to make the national news in 1995; that Blur and Oasis were releasing their latest singles on the same day was a golden egg freshly laid for a media starved of any recent (or decent) controversy or excitement in popular music. As an added bonus, there was the spin of a North/South (Oasis/Blur) cultural battle, a generated rivalry initially fuelled by both bands that always threatened to spill over in fisticuffs at dawn with the angle being that Oasis appealed to the working classes while Blur appealed to the educated South. Or the wannabe working class - I tend to picture Jarvis Cocker's would-be proletariat girlfriend in Pulp's 'Common People' having 'Definitely Maybe' on heavy rotation on her stereo rather than 'Parklife'.
That Blur won the battle but lost the war is a matter of pop folklore/tedious record (take your pick); I've already said enough on that. What's more interesting to me is the circuitous path Blur had taken to get to a point that anyone should care so much about their records. Originally aligned to the baggy/neo psychedelic movement of the early nineties, Blur re-invented themselves circa 1993 as arch social commentators of a very English cast in a series of releases that both presented and romantically nostalgiacised the low key culture of an idealised Albion.
To say that the images of steam trains and spitfires that fronted their record sleeves helped put the 'Brit' in Britpop is obvious and a little trite, yet it's no less accurate for it - Blur purposely set out to turn the attention of the record buying public back from whatever was coming from across the Atlantic (grunge, mainly). And as well as harking back to classic British pop, Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn et al stamped their music as home-grown by unashamedly putting the regional accent back into music which, after a slew of dance mixes and grunge whinges, was as startlingly refreshing as the sixties Merseysound was amongst the various American imports that filled the domestic charts in the early sixties.
But for me I'm afraid, I had little time for either Blur or Oasis in 1995. I've already laid out my beefs with the latter, but Blur and their Small Faces/Kinks fixations and flirtations were in their own way no less recycling and repackaging music of the past to provide an alternative to the present. And although they may have inadvertently kick started the Brit pop movement, by the time of 'Country House', with a niche finally found, they had climbed into the driver’s seat, taken over the wheel and proceeded to drive it off the road; context may have invested the song with more stature than the band probably intended, but 'Country House' remains a very uneasy sounding single.
'Country House' has the immediate music hall roll of 'Parkilfe' for recent converts to latch on to, but a lyric of Balzac and Prozac paints it with a knowing Groucho club gloss that converts the tune into the key of irony, a suggestion that Blur were talking down rather than to. As a whole, it's a mix and match summation of everything they were 'about' from the knockabout to the arty but flat falling "Blow, blow me out I am so sad, I don't know why" middle eight. Albarn turns the dial on his 'mockney' accent up to 'exaggerated' until Dick Van Dyke's 'Bert' the chimney sweep and Jack Wild's 'Artful Dodger' battle it out for dominance in a mouth that reads the lyric with the smug charm of a bad character actor.
Albarn cast himself centre stage as ringmaster presiding over the anarchic tomfoolery unfolding before him, with his 'Ohhhhhhhh's a laughter track exclamation of constant surprise that he can't believe the mischief they're all getting up to (which presumably also includes the ironic use of the soft porn stars who ironically strip off in the ironic video). But that's it's main problem - no matter how hard it flatters to deceive, 'Country House' is a charmless affair with little warmth or humour; it's all been beaten out by the sheer forced effort of a band attempting to cover all bases as Britpop's jesters and philosophisers, and then ground out by the sheer repetition of the custard pie that the knees up chorus stuffs in your face every time it comes round.
Blur were riding a wave at that point and 'Country House' is probably the single they had to release to keep riding it, but hindsight has shown it to be the short term fix of giving a dog as a Christmas present; smiles at the time, but all that’s left by New Year's is a tune you can whistle (or a dog you can no longer be bothered to walk). All of which went to show that the space between Blue and Oasis wasn't as great as everybody thought. Not yet anyway.
It's my own fault I suppose. Because my teenage years fell squarely within the eighties, I grew up with a version of Michael Jackson that's become definitive. Not for me the precocious early seventies child star of the Jackson 5 - no, my Michael Jackson was the single gloved, red leather jacketed face of the pneumatic pop sheen of 'Billie Jean' and its ilk. Golden years. Unfortunately, it also means that the music produced by the latter day Jackson wasn't really for me either, and if I looked sideways at 'You Are Not Alone' then along comes 'Earth Song' to knock me into a complete loop.
